The present invention relates to a carrying vehicle system which carries an article to a predetermined location using a carrying vehicle, an article housing system in which the article is temporarily housed for storage, and in particular, to the configuration of a carrying system that can be efficiently operated during system construction.
A carrying system has hitherto been known which comprises a carrying vehicle system that carries an article to a predetermined location using a carrying vehicle, an article housing system in which the article is temporarily housed for storage, and an integrating controller that integrally manages these systems.
As the scale of such a carrying system becomes larger, more and more time is required to construct the whole system. Accordingly, it has been desirable that even when the carrying system as a whole is still being constructed, once the minimum arrangements that enable carrying operations have been constructed, at least this already constructed part of the system can be operated.
Further, in constructing the carrying system, defects are detected and eliminated by repeating operations of allowing the carrying vehicle system and the article housing system to be operated by the corresponding controllers, further allowing the integrating controller to integrally control and tentatively operate these systems to find defects or the like in a control program, correcting the control program, and operating the systems again. However, to operate even a part of the whole carrying system, the integrating controller must be operated. Then, the integrating controller operates both part of the whole system for which the control program has not been corrected and which is still being constructed and part of the system which has already been completed and confirmed to operate correctly. For the part of the system still being constructed, to correct defects in the control program, this program must be restarted. Then, the integrating controller must be stopped whenever the control program is restarted.
Further, if an error occurs in the part of the system still being constructed, the integrating controller may be stopped. When the integrating controller is stopped, disadvantageously the part of the system operating correctly is also stopped.
Furthermore, it becomes impossible to rewrite the data for the integrating controller being operated so that it can be used for tests. As a result, it is difficult to partly operate the carrying system.
Thus, the present invention provides a large-scale carrying system that allows the operation of only a part of the system which has been completely constructed, while concurrently allowing the construction of a part of the system which has not been constructed yet.
An object of the present invention is as described above. Now, description will be give of means for solving the problems.
That is, according to the invention, there is provided a carrying system comprising a carrying vehicle system which carries an article to a predetermined location using a carrying vehicle, an article housing system in which the article is temporarily housed, a system set comprising a plurality of system units each including at least one of the carrying vehicle system and the article housing system, an integrating controller which can control the whole system set, and an auxiliary controller which controls some of the system units of the system set, wherein the integrating controller controls the system set except for the system units controlled by the auxiliary controller.
According to the invention, carrying system further comprises a simulator set comprising a carrying vehicle controller simulator which simulates the carrying vehicle system and an article housing controller simulator which simulates the article housing system, and the simulator set is controlled by the auxiliary controller.
According the invention, the integrating controller and the auxiliary controller are connected together, and the auxiliary controller transfers a control program relating to the system units controlled by the auxiliary controller, to the integrating controller so that on the basis of the transferred control program, the integrating controller can control the system units which have been controlled by the auxiliary controller.
According to the invention, there is provided a system constructing method of constructing a carrying system comprising a carrying vehicle system which carries an article to a predetermined location using a carrying vehicle, an article housing system in which the article is temporarily housed, a system set comprising a plurality of system units each including at least one of the carrying vehicle system and the article housing system, and an integrating controller which can control the whole system set, wherein a part of the system set that has not been constructed yet is tested and adjusted using an auxiliary controller which tests and adjusts this part of the system unit without affecting a part of the system set operated by the integrating controller, and control of the tested and adjusted part of the system unit is transferred to the integrating controller.